| Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
PlayStation 3 GOOD: impressive action scenes, voice acting, Twitter updates BAD: enemy repetition, sometimes incredulous level design FINAL: You NEED this game. |  Screenshot courtesy Sony Computer Entertainment |
The lush environments and impressive character animation of 2007's PlayStation3 exclusive "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune" ensured Sony would order up a sequel. Two years later, "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves" is a marquee holiday release that arrived to widespread critical acclaim. Sony - these days an anxious giant locked in combat with Microsoft's Xbox 360 console - breathed easy. There was a lot riding on Drake's tires.
However, "Uncharted 2" is often a victim of its own relentless magnificence. The game pushes so furiously into realistic locales that the failings seem all the more bizarre. Hero Nathan Drake's sophomore effort may take him all around the world, but mostly he adventures in the Uncanny Valley.
The game has the kind of well-produced plotline that gamers often mistake for a genuinely good story. Drake is drafted by some fellow treasure hunters to search for the Cintamani Stone, a powerful relic name-checked by Marco Polo himself. Not long in, the uneasy alliance falls apart and a cardboard Nazi villain is introduced. Correction: he's not really a Nazi, but he might as well be. Drake, amusingly caught in a love triangle between his two female companions, must race the bad guy to the Stone's secret location in the Himalayas.
It's not a fantastic story, yet it is presented extraordinarily well. This is a shining strength for "Uncharted 2," and a badge of honor for the development team at Naughty Dog. The voice acting is fantastic. The facial animations of the CG-rendered cast are phenomenal. The way the game makes blockbuster action scenes perfectly playable is second-to-none. It just seems a shame that all that technical skill and artistic detailing is stapled over an Indiana Jones elevator pitch.
There are other examples of shattered illusions: the characters' eyes are often unsettlingly wet and dark, the same bullet-soaking enemies repeat over and over again, and at many points the level design turns the corner to ridiculous. Much of the game suffers from Raccoon City Syndrome. If you remember your old "Resident Evil" games, you might recall that in order to get to the Raccoon City Shopping Mall, you had to find a handful of special keys and solve some odd color-matching puzzles. This had nothing to do with the zombie infestation plaguing the city; this was built by the city's founders as the best way to control the population's mall access. "Uncharted 2" follows in the same vein. You'll get to a vast underground temple that is so nonsensically well-protected with traps, ropes and wheels that it does not feel like one of the Wonders of the Ancient World. Rather, it's just a video game level. These frequent, small fumbles keep "Uncharted 2" this side of Shangri-la.
Thankfully, "Uncharted 2" excels in giving fans what they want: bombastic action scenes, punctuated with tense exploration levels. The game has one of the most harrowing opening levels in all of video game-dom: a bloody Drake is stuck in a derailed train car dangling over the side of a mountain. You must climb up the car to the relative safety of the cliff. The scene is not especially difficult, but you'll unconsciously hold your breath as the danger mounts. From there, you find yourself in one unbelievable spectacle after another. Jumping from truck to truck in a moving convoy. Leaping over rooftops to escape helicopter gunfire. Riding a collapsing building. In a lesser game, these would be non-interactive cut scenes. My immersion-busting quibbles aside, "Uncharted 2" deserves accolades for effortlessly combining the finesse of complex jumping puzzles with the visceral brutality of arena-based shooter combat.
Humor also plays a role in the game. Drake's hand-scrawled diary entries show comic details well beyond what's normally expected from an in-game hint system.
The single-player adventure gobbled up about twelve hours of my life, but I have not stopped playing just yet. "Uncharted 2," in a series first, features a robust online multi-player mode with both competitive and cooperative options. Although, the game seems poor at balancing teams. Most of my online matches have been alongside players of horribly lopsided skill sets.
"Uncharted 2" is also the biggest console game yet to support Twitter. Once you enter your account details the game will automatically post tweets summarizing your recent in-game accomplishments.
When a game gets this good we have to raise the review standards and be a little pickier than usual. Naughty Dog has already set a new benchmark for a single-player experience. While possessing a handful of bothersome limitations, "Uncharted 2" stands as a fantastically fun video game, filled with technical brilliance that promises the best is yet to come.
